It’s much bigger / taller than it looks. It’s flying away, so you can’t really see how long the legs and neck and beak are. He’s pretty shy. For the dozen times I’ve seen him, this is the best I’ve been able to do!
UPDATE: A reader sends this in via the email in the sidebar:
Your picture of the crane is very pretty. When I was driving in the sunshine on Saturday morning to the Carmel the trees on the hills were golden and it was as though Angels with lighted candles were lining the way. Outside the Chapel was a blazing red leafed tree absolutely perfect for the feast of St. Teresa of Jesus.
In the late 1960s Holy Cards of saints and all things good and holy were by and large replaced by pictures such as that of the crane above, and had captions like “Be nice!” or some such stupid thing. This was a move against the saints and all things good and holy by tree-hugging knuckleheads.
My purpose in putting up such pictures of faunae and florae is not to do this. We are now in a post-1960s era, at least where the biological solution has gone into effect! The purpose here is much more along the lines of appreciation of nature by the saints.
Remember Romans chapter one, about the natural law, how nature screams out to us that God is the Almight Creator whom we should obey in all truth and in all charity?
Remember Saint Francis, whose praise of nature reflected his realization that nature is in expectation of the redemption of the sons of man, whereby nature accusses us of our disobedience in original sin and any personal sin, reprimanding us to be back on the path of salvation, whereby we can, through our bodies, through our souls, lay all of creation before the Lord in all obedience in all truth and in all charity?
Remember Saint Teresa of Avila, who so burned with love for God and neighbor, and who said that we should always be making analogies of nature about the love of God for us? Thus the exclamatory email I received. Wondeful, no?
Accompany me, Father George David Byers, S.S.L., S.T.D., as I begin life as a Catholic Priest-Hermit by choice. Holy Souls Hermitage is dedicated to the sanctification of my fellow priests, bishops, deacons & seminarians going through the purgatory of this life or the next. Prayer and sacrifice go up, of course, for both Benedict XVI and the next Successor of Saint Peter. 
